Mr eel
Internet Explorer - Something to look out for when coding JS
Internet Explorer doesn’t just have a shit box model, it also has a terrible javascript engine. Inevitably my DOM-compliant javascript code — which works beautifully in Firefox — will explode when I try to run it in Internet Exploder.
The debugging text is useless. The actual error text is vague i.e. “not implemented”. What’s not implemented? It never tells me. That wouldn’t be quite as bad, but it mis-reports the line the error is occurring on, so even an educated guess is difficult.
Trial and error(s) is the only way to pin the bastard down.
Anyway, all this complaining was prompted by one particular problem I had to debug today. IE has a global variable called parent. I was using this variable to store a reference to a DOM node’s parent (but of course!). I could care less what IE was using the variable for, I just wanted it! The problem was that I was trying to assign a value to the variable without declaring it. IE didn’t like that so much. So I declared the variable using var, squashing the original reference and the problem went away.
Grrrrrrrrr.
Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
Getting totally thrashed on Mario Kart DS via the interwebs is annoying, but that’s ok. It just makes me wanna polish my kart racing skills.
Even though Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection works seamlessly in-game, configuring it is a little more tricky.
Firstly, as far as I can tell, the DS uses 108.11b for Wi-Fi. If you have a newer router that supports 108.11g, make sure you enable B as well.
Secondly, the DS doesn’t like hidden SSIDs. Which seems really stupid when you manually input the SSID and it still doesn’t find it. I could only connect to my router when I stopped hiding it. Annoying coz I’m trying to maintain at least some minimal security on my network.
I would like to use WPA encryption, but I have no idea if the DS supports it. For now I’m just using WEP encryption.
Since the DS complies to the Wi-Fi standard it does have a MAC address, so luckily I associate it to the router. A bit more security. Be buggered if I’ll run an access point without at least that. I don’t actually want to share my interwebs with the neighbors 
Bottom line is this, if you have an open access-point it’s dead easy to set up. You’re DS can automatically set up a connection. If you have even minimal security on your AP, get ready for a bit of fiddling. In the end not all that much, but if you’re doing it trial and error like me, it might take a bit of time.
I’m not blaming Nintendo here. I think their choice to use Wi-Fi rather than some proprietary protocol is really paying off, but it illustrates how shit Wi-Fi is in terms of ease-of-configuration. This is not technology for your average punter.
Mario Kart DS - First Impressions
Thankfully Nintendo haven’t made Australian customers wait too long to get Mario Kart DS. I got my copy today. Since I don’t live in the city I had a friend buy me a copy. He had to go to a couple of different stores to hunt down a copy. Apparently EB Games had sold out twice already! So obviously a super popular game at the moment.
The big sell for MKDS for me is the stupid huge amount of tracks, many taken from previous MK games, but perhaps more importantly; Wi-Fi!
I can connect my DS to my wireless router and play Mario Kart against other cats over the interwebs. Yay! It works brilliantly too. Once it’s configured, you just pick the multiplayer option. There is something really appealing about playing against other folks so far away, especially on a hand-held.
Nintendo have done a great job making it all work very smoothly, though the Wi-Fi functionality isn’t particularly ambitious. At the moment it only supports simple games. In the future I think they could support things like leader boards and competitions, perhaps post-game chats. I’m not really criticising them, better to keep it simple and get it right first, then expand on it in the future. I’m just really excited about all the other cool stuff we can do with it!
More impressions as I continue to play…
CSS Hacks - Targeting Internet Explorer
Just about any web professional using pure CSS for layout has probably come across layout bugs. The biggest culprit is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. No surprise there, other folks have complained about it already.
The only real choice for getting around these bugs are using CSS-hacks. Now there is something of a religious war over using these hacks. Some devs think that since they often mean creating invalid CSS we simply shouldn’t use them. My view is a bit more pragmatic. Hacks are the only practical way of dealing with these bugs, so we should just use them and document their use.
Anyhow, to the subject at hand. Sometimes you want to target specific versions of IE — only have IE apply a particular rule.
The first one is really easy. Just prefix your rule with an underscore. Like so:
_font-size:2em;
All versions of IE will apply this rule. If you wanted to target every version of IE after IE 5, you can use a little comment hack:
font-size/**/:2em;
IE 5 will not apply this rule, but IE 6 will. One thing to look out for though, is that most other browsers would apply this rule as well. So if you wanted to target IE 6 only, you can combine the two hacks:
_font-size/**/:2em;
Easy! Looks like crap, but it works beautifully.
Improving Audio Plugin Interfaces
In my previous post I had a good rant about how poorly I think of most audio plugin interfaces. Luckily I’m not the only one who feels the same. TC Electronics are having a go at tackling the problem.
Never mind the marketing guff, they’re having a go at making interfaces that actually make it easier to work with the plugins. The issue of inconsistencies between UIs from different plugin makers remains, but this is a good start.
Best of all, they aren’t trying to make ‘em look like fucking hardware. Hooray!
The Problem with Synth and EFX Plugins
Most audio plugins seem to have been made by developers with a hardware fetish. The interfaces seek to replicate the look and feel of a piece of hardware. Wood-panelling, LEDs, knobs, tiny abbreviated control labels.
Yikes. It all makes for a pretty miserable experience. For starters most of ‘em look like poo. Just kinda nasty, certainly nothing like the hardware they are meant to evoke. They make themselves more difficult to use because screen space is given to eye-candy rather than controls. Behavior between one plugin and another is inconsistent. In some the knobs work by sliding your mouse up and down, in others you have to move it about in tiny circles — this is so brain-dead words escape me.
All this effort to replicate hardware and if anything they are worse. At least with some hardware you have actual controls to touch with your hands. Using soft synths is a bit like trying to program some hardware with one finger. After all a mouse is only one point.
Perhaps even worse, they replicate the obtuse and difficult interfaces found in hardware, for no real reason! It’s software. It doesn’t have the same limitations as hardware, so why aren’t we improving on the experience?
Bluntly, there are too many unimaginative types out there making plugins. Making the same mistakes. Don’t get me started on all the fucking faux-analogue plugins! So much for the possibilities of soft-synths.
I know it’s too much to hope for, but I really wish there was a standard for plugin interfaces. It would save me a hell of a lot of mucking about and go a long way to breaking this fascination with replicating hardware.
Are Games Journalists Part of the Industry?
Next Generation is one of the better sources of information about the games industry. It’s nice to see that they are willing to kick dirt into some faces.
This link is to a interesting article discussing the role of journalists in game industry. A choice quote:
“Are game journalists part of the game industry, or are they disagreeable maggots feeding on other people’s creativity?”
Ouch! The main thrust of the article is that is stupid for games journalists to consider themselves a part of the industry since they aren’t actually involved in producing the games.
I would agree with that. It’s a bit like a music journalist taking credit for um *sigh* Missy Higgins winning an ARIA award. An obviously a ridiculous idea.
Now, to wait for the shit-slinging to begin. Shouldn’t be too long until some journalist gets his hackles up and writes something nasty. Hooray!
First Person Games Are Boring
OK, not all of them, but the vast majority are. Most are essentially the same as the last with some different graphics. Even the better FPS like Half-Life aren’t really all that much different from their competition.
I wouldn’t feel a need to point this out if not for the overwhelming amount of FPS on the market. They suck up budgets, they cram into gaming magazines, they dominate a large chunk of the industry and they are static, un-changing. Dull.
I’m not the only one with some gripes about FPS. This article on game pro picks on some of the common tropes in FPS games, with suggestions of how they could be improved.
Unfortunately they aren’t really thinking about it too deeply. For example “The protagonist is not a one-armed ghost”. So… if we fix that problem it’ll be a revolution in FPS games? How about “Weapons should never become obsolete”. Not even getting close to interesting. OK, one more “Environments should be interactive–no, really”. Maybe, that would certainly open up some more possibilities. Some of the physics puzzles in Half-Life are suggestive. But making a game more realistic doesn’t make it a better game.
Here’s one; how about making a FPS without guns?